DuPont (Wilmington, Delaware / USA; www.dupont.com) has selected Louisville, Kentucky and Fayetteville, North Carolina as the locations of the new monomer and resins facilities that will feed its expanded “Tedlar” PVF film production. The two new plants will increase feedstock capacity by 50% and will represent the lion’s share of the USD 120m the chemical group has budgeted for this segment of its multi-phase expansion scheme for products used by the photovoltaics industry.

The state of Kentucky is providing tax incentives for the Louisville facility, where USD 45 bn has been earmarked for expansion of existing capacity. At Fayetteville, a new plant is to be built at a cost of USD 55m, including a small state grant. DuPont is spending an additional USD 20m on the engineering and design phase of a “PV2000” series film expansion to be implemented at an as yet undisclosed US location. Project approval is pending, a company spokesperson told PIE.

The first stage of the scheme to double PV films output announced in September 2008 – see Plasteurope.com of 15.09.2008 – was completed earlier this year, with new capacity for the “PV2100” series installed at Towanda, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York / USA. By mid-2010 DuPont, which produces the high performance films used in backsheets for solar modules at six US locations, wants to have the doubled capacity in place. A previous expansion was implemented in 2007. The US group forecasts that overall sales of its products for the photovoltaics industry will exceed USD 1 bn by 2012.